First and last, the purpose of Blog Action Day is to create a discussion. We ask bloggers to take a single day out of their schedule and focus it on an important issue.

By doing so on the same day, the blogging community effectively changes the conversation on the web and focuses audiences around the globe on that issue.

Out of this discussion naturally flow actions, advice, ideas, plans, and empowerment. In 2007 on the theme of the Environment, we saw bloggers running environmental experiments, detailing innovative ideas on creating sustainable practices and focusing audience's attentions on organizations and companies promoting green agendas. In 2008 we aim to again focus the blogging community's energies and passions, this time on the mammoth issue of global poverty.

The blog, called Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Personal Memos, has been active for over a year and has attracted a wide readership. But despite promising to spend a set amount of time writing the blog, he has seldom managed to post this year.

"Since my last post on the blog, a few months have passed," he writes.

"But this doesn't ‎mean that I have not been keeping my promise of spending 15 minutes per week ‎on it. As a matter of fact, I have spent more than the allocated time on the blog. The ‎magnitude of the reception and acclamation from the viewers was beyond ‎expectations."

As well as writing about his life and policies he also takes time to answer letters from readers.

Syrian users of Facebook said on Friday the authorities had blocked access to the social network Web site as part of a crackdown on political activism on the Internet.

"Facebook helped further civil society in Syria and form civic groups outside government control. This is why it has been banned," women's rights advocate Dania al-Sharif told Reuters.

"They cut off communications between us and the outside world. We are used to this behavior from our government," said Mais al-Sharbaji, who set up a Facebook group for amateur Syrian photographers.

There was no comment form the government, which has intensified a campaign against bloggers, virtual opinion forums and independent media sites in recent months.

In a lengthy article published online last fall, three Russian rights activists argued that a strident, vulgar and uniform pro-Kremlin ideology had so permeated blogs and chat rooms that it could only be the result of a coordinated campaign.

Putin's allies in the online world acknowledge that the Internet represents a challenge to the status quo in Russia, which has, since Soviet times, relied on state-controlled television to influence public opinion across the country's 11 time zones.

Allies of the Kremlin have also begun buying some of the companies that have helped make the Internet a bastion of free expression in Russia. Gazeta.ru, long the country's most respected online newspaper, was sold in December to a metals magnate and Putin loyalist.

And last October, Sup, which is owned by Alexander Mamut, a tycoon with ties to the Kremlin, bought the rights to develop the Russian-language segment of U.S.-based LiveJournal. The segment, with half a million users, is Russia's most popular blog portal.

"Mr. Rykov is pro-Kremlin. Mamut and Sup are pro-Kremlin. The social networks are all being bought by pro-Kremlin people," Ruslan Paushu, 30, a popular blogger who works for Rykov, said in an interview. "Everything's okay."

Wolfgang Kleinwaechter, special adviser to the chairmen of the Internet Governance Forum, a group convened by the United Nations, said some Russian officials he has spoken to are considering a separate Internet, with Cyrillic domain names, and appear to be studying China's Internet controls.

Malaysian online political commentators have formed a group to protect bloggers' interests after two of them were sued by a newspaper with close government ties.

The National Alliance of Bloggers' main goal is to "protect bloggers," and to try to get the government to see their point of view and why they have made certain postings, the new group's president, Ahirudin Attan, wrote on his popular blog "Rocky's Bru."

The alliance was formed late Thursday, Ahirudin wrote.

About 50 of Malaysia's popular online personalities held a meeting and decided to start the organization because a few bloggers were being "demonized again and again" by the government, Ahirudin said.

"When certain quarters in government become hostile towards bloggers, I believe they mean to aim their hostility at a small group of bloggers or online writers whose views and takes of current affairs they fear," Ahirudin wrote.

So the launching of Twitter provides a good alternative considering that the use of mobile phones is much higher than that of computers. In Malawi for example, there are about 50,000 Internet users against about 700,000 mobile phone users out of a population of about 12 million. Twitter allows users to post a small update via SMS, instant messaging client and the web. Anyone who chooses to follow you will get that update on the Twitter home page, or their mobile phone of they choose to. Unlike most mobile phone web services, you can update via SMS from anywhere in the world and from virtually any handset.

Although Twitter was designed to let users announce what they're doing at the time of posting, we have already seen other uses coming up. The train system in San Fransisco (BART) uses Twitter to announce changes in schedules; conference participants use it to post notes of the sessions at the conference and there are updates from news companies like BBC via Twitter.

Yahoo Inc. will offer international news from reporters working with U.S. newspaper publisher McClatchy Co., including a blog written by Iraqi staffers, the companies said on Wednesday.

The project will be called "Trusted Voices," and feature coverage from McClatchy foreign correspondents based in the Middle East, China and Latin America, among other regions.

Yahoo plans to launch the coverage on its news site early in the second quarter of 2007. The companies did not disclose financial terms of the deal.

Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin said most websites were aimed at being provocative and were run by frustrated journalists and political pundits, the Star daily reported.

"Do not quote them because you are disgracing yourself as you are the authority. Do not give credit to such anarchist websites," Zainuddin was quoted as saying.

Malaysia's media is kept under tight control, while blogs have seen an increase in popularity as Malaysians take to cyberspace to discuss politics and social issues.

Blogs run by Malaysians in recent months have alleged corruption by government figures in writings that later sparked mainstream news reports.

"The information posted on the blog website may be something provocative, politically motivated, inaccurate and is mostly rumour floated for the interests of certain parties," Zainuddin was quoted as saying by the state Bernama news agency.

What did the Egyptian government accuse him of?
According to the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, Kareem stands charged with the following alleged crimes: (1) Spreading data and malicious rumors that disrupt public security; (2) Defaming the President of Egypt; (3) Incitement to overthrow the regime upon hatred and contempt; (4) Incitement to hate "Islam" and breach of the public peace standards; (5) Highlighting inappropriate aspects that harm the reputation of Egypt and spreading them to the public.

While chief executives of many US giants - such as GM and Sun - blog regularly, it remains unusual for a British company to have a blog. Recent research found only two FTSE 100 companies running blogs. This reluctance is backed-up by a survey published in September 2006 by web hosting company Fasthosts, which found only 3 per cent of UK SMEs intending to start blogs. This is despite there being 54 million blogs on the web, with another 75,000 created daily.

GRS Sign Company - which produces commercial signs - is therefore unusual. It started its blog in June. "It allows us to talk among ourselves, about our business," says Richard Dows, a signwriter at GRS with responsibility for its web, having previously been a web designer. The target audience is "anyone who reads blogs," he says.

As a new blog, it is still building its hits and responses from customers, suppliers and the public. But - unlike some blogs - it seeks comments. Recent blogs have included a discussion on alcohol-related accidents at work, the challenge of disposing of old computers, conducting fire risk assessments, the design of braille signs and, of course, the growing demand for no smoking signs.

ICANN is pleased to provide its first annual report in accordance with its commitments established under the Joint Project Agreement signed in September 2006.

As part of ICANN's commitment to greater transparency and accessibility, we have posted this annual report for review and established two means to facilitate public comment. The first is a forum for the community to submit comments and suggestions, which is available at 2006-ar-comments@icann.org. Comments can be viewed at http://forum.icann.org/lists/2006-ar-comments/.

The second is a new blog on the ICANN website that allows members of the community to exchange their views about the report. The blog can be found at http://blog.icann.org/.

We invite feedback on this inaugural annual report to better inform its development and ensure that it reflects the views and interests of the community.

Internet and telephone services across Asia were disrupted, hampering financial transactions, after earthquakes near Taiwan damaged undersea cables.

"The repairs could take two to three weeks," said Leng Tai-feng, president of Chunghwa Telecom Co.'s international business. The Taipei-based company, Taiwan's largest phone operator, said two of its undersea cables were cut.

A series of earthquakes, including a magnitude 7.1 tremor, struck Taiwan last night and today, killing at least two people and cutting power supplies. HSBC Holdings Plc said its online banking services were down, while Chunghwa said almost no calls could be made to Southeast Asia, causing disruption to companies including First State Investments in Singapore.

Chinese Internet company Baidu launched its blog search service on Thursday to help Internet users navigate their way through the 20 million Chinese bloggers.

It is the first Chinese search service specifically for blogs.

Yu Jun, a senior executive with Baidu, said the service was based on a database of billions of websites, including all the blogs supported by Chinese blog service providers and individual blog websites.

The new service is expected to boost Baidu's users. Baidu started its space channel last July to provide blog services.

Many people have asked about the meaning of our name. "Baidu" was inspired by a poem written more than 800 years ago during the Song Dynasty. The poem compares the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour with the search for one's dream while confronted by life's many obstacles. ".hundreds and thousands of times, for her I searched in chaos, suddenly, I turned by chance, to where the lights were waning, and there she stood." Baidu, whose literal meaning is hundreds of times, represents persistent search for the ideal.

Netanyahu started a Hebrew blog this week in order to reach his constituents while bypassing the media and to allow him to write longer articles that the media would not publish.

Netanyahu's spokesman said that the opposition leader wanted to post his articles in English but was looking for a staff of volunteers to help.

Readers of the website can already send messages to Netanyahu on his site, www.netanyahu.org.il, in many languages.

Asia's blogosphere is surging forward with nearly half, 46 per cent, of those online actively blogging, according to research released by Microsoft's MSN and Windows Live Online Services Business. The research showed that blogging is a social phenomenon with Asians primarily blogging as a means to maintain and build their social connections and to express themselves. The research findings are reportedly based on an online survey of more than 25,000 MSN portal visitors across seven markets.

Microsoft noted that blogging as a corporate or business tool still appears to be nascent in most markets, with little interest from consumers in blogs from business or political leaders. The exceptions are South Korea where blogging is reported to have permeated all aspects of life and India where a culture of self improvement is seeing business related blogs become popular.

The report suggested that netizens in Asia are most interested in those blogs written by friends and family (74 per cent) while blogs by work colleagues were the second most popular blog but were a distant second with only a quarter of respondents showing interest. In South Korea and India, however, respondents are most interested in blogs covering a specific topic of interest, the report said.

Still, only three percent of Europe's estimated 130 million Internet users create blogs, it said, adding that most of the bloggers were in France, Italy and Spain.

"France today is still the country that blogs the most, with nearly one million active bloggers," the study said.

The report was based on a survey of 7,377 online consumers in seven countries -- Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden.

It found that, unsurprisingly, bloggers tended to be young and first-adopters of new technology -- those for whom any IT innovation is a must-have.

After attracting 11.1 million unique visitors each month to the station's online social network, Skyblog.com, Mr. Bellanger is planning to reach for the skies in January. That is when he intends to spin off new blogs in German, Spanish and English to offer the same rich, raucous mix of the inner thoughts and videos of thousands of young bloggers.

Though only about 10 percent of people in the Arab world have Internet access, the rate continues to rise dramatically, having multiplied fivefold since 2000, according to Internet World Stats, a Web site that tracks Internet usage and related information.

The number of bloggers in Saudi Arabia has tripled since the beginning of the year, reaching an estimated 2,000.

Young women make up half the bloggers in the kingdom, one of the most traditional countries in the world, where women are forced to dress modestly and are not allowed to drive cars or travel without permission from a male guardian. Lured by the possible anonymity of the medium, Saudi women have produced a string of blogs filled with feminist poetry, steamy romantic episodes and rants against their restricted lives and patriarchal society.

The Internet Society of China has recommended to the government that bloggers be required to use their real names when they register blogs, state media said on Monday, in the latest attempt to regulate free-wheeling Web content.

The society, which is affiliated with the Ministry of Information Industry, said no decision had been made but that a 'real name system' was inevitable.

"A real name system will be an unavoidable choice if China wants to standardise and develop its blog industry," the official Xinhua news agency quoted the Internet Society's secretary general, Huang Chengqing, as saying.

"We suggest, in a recent report submitted to the ministry, that a real name system be implemented in China's blog industry," Huang said.

Tension between the government and Pronk escalated after he wrote in his personal Web blog this month (www.janpronk.nl) that Sudanese army losses in recent fighting in northern Darfur "seem to have been very high."

"Reports speak about hundreds of casualties in each of the two battles, many wounded soldiers and many taken as prisoner," he said, adding that morale was low among Sudanese troops in northern Darfur and "some generals have been sacked; soldiers have refused fighting."

On Thursday, the Sudanese armed forces said those remarks amounted to "psychological war against the Sudanese army" and declared that Pronk was "persona non-grata." One day later the military demanded an official apology.

According to the official news agency, the government said it was "committed to cooperate" with the U.N. and would work with Pronk's replacement "in accordance with signed treaties with the U.N. and the current principles of international law."

"Please remember to check out my site!" she said, writing down her name on trade show pamphlets.

Hoshikawa's agency, Style Corp., would pay for her blogging operation once she could show them she had a good following of admirers, she said.

"I need more fans, so I can get more gigs, and someday become a race queen," she said.

She declined to say how much she was paid, but said the top companions get more job offers from the big electronics companies and earn four to five times as much per gig.

For fans like Tatebayashi, the "companions" posing next to some of Japan's most technologically advanced gear are far from gratuitous.

The mini-skirted women are the reason he took the afternoon off work and, his best cameras in tow, trekked out during a typhoon to the convention center, a two-hour train ride from his home in western Tokyo.

"It's a long-term investment," he said. "Plus, maybe some of them will become my friends."

The number of blog sites in China reached 34 million in August, a 30-fold increase from four years ago, state media said on Tuesday, despite a series of curbs on media and dissent.

China has more than 17 million people writing blogs (short for Web logs) and more than 75 million people reading them, Xinhua news agency said.

Authors of personal blogs choose their own subject and can instantly forward their writings to friends anywhere in China or the world.

"The rapid growth of blog sites in China also brought potential business opportunities to the advertising industry," Xinhua said. "Some blogs written by famous people attract millions of daily readers." The report said that out of the 34 million blog sites, 70 percent were "dormant," having remained unchanged for more than a month.

In one long moment In August 31st, bloggers from all over the world will post a recommendation of 5 new Blogs, Preferably, Blogs different from their own culture, point of view and attitude. On this day, blog surfers will find themselves leaping and discovering new, unknown Blogs, celebrating the discovery of new people and new bloggers.

1. Find 5 new Blogs that you find interesting
2. Notify the 5 bloggers that you are recommending on them on BlogDay 2006
3. Write a short description of the Blogs and place a a link to the recommended Blogs
4. Post the BlogDay Post (on August 31st) and
5. Add the BlogDay tag using this link: http://technorati.com/tag/BlogDay2006 and a link to BlogDay web site at http://www.blogday.org

Reporters Without Borders today condemned the sudden disappearance on 28 July of two blogs by leading Tibetan poet Woeser (also known as Oser and, in Chinese, Wei Se). They were shut down by the websites that hosted them - Tibetcul.net, a Tibetan cultural portal, and Daqi.com, a local blog platform - presumably on government orders amid a continuing wave of online censorship in China.

"We are appalled by the closure of Woeser's blogs and we call for them to be reopened," the press freedom organisation said. "As her poetry is banned in China, these blogs were the only way she had left to express herself. Their disappearance shows how the Chinese authorities go out of their way to limit Tibetan culture to folklore for tourists."

Reporters Without Borders added: "Political control of the Chinese Internet is becoming more and more strict. The Chinese search engines recently updated their word filters while chat forums have been closed on government orders. We again appeal to the Chinese authorities to respect freedom of expression, a right guaranteed under their constitution."

Dozens of new social networks are coming to market this year, but Cyworld has seven years of experience and the backing of SK Communications, a subsidiary of Korea's largest wireless operator SK Telecom, to kick off its attempt at global domination.

Cyworld's U.S. efforts are more than just a way to tap the American market, the site is the platform for building sites that will be launched in Europe - Germany and the U.K. among other EU countries - as well as South America, and east Asia. Cyworld already has sites in China, Japan and Taiwan. While MySpace has similar plans to launch in Germany this summer, Cyworld plans to open a site in Germany early next year in a partnership with Deutsche Telecom.

Create your Minime - your avatar in Cyworld. Your Minime represents all aspects of you ... the "you" inside of you, the "you" you want to be. Or just the "you" you feel like sharing today. Have fun styling your Minime. You can change its hair, clothing, facial expression, mood, position and background as often as you like.

Last week the government banned access to 17 Internet Web sites and blogs it says preach messages of religious hatred. Silence is golden it is said. But our babus are desperate to prove their illiteracy. So instead of banning the offensive sites and blogs entire domains such as blogspot.com and typepad.com with its thousands and millions of journals of creative expression were completely blocked.

No proper explanation was given for the ban. One major news channel said that "terrorists were now using blogs to get their message across!" while some other said that "terrorists were now tech savvy and using blogs". The details of links between terrorists and blogs nobody was able to explain. My guess is even the TV news editor or presenter or reporter won't know!

Though there is not yet a fixed way for creating revenue from blog services in China, search engines and Internet portals have in succession launched their own blog services. Sina, Sohu, BlogCN, Bokee.com, ChinaBlog.net and others are already crowding the market.

As Internet usage continues to climb here, so do the numbers of women who have started Web logs, or blogs, to express themselves in ways they might never do in public.

"I love blogging because it helps me to express myself and I like to write in English," says Farah Aziz, a translation student at King Saud University in Riyadh who started blogging in January 2005.

The content of Ms. Aziz's blog, which chronicles the life of a college student, would probably do little to cause alarm among government censors. But other women bloggers are drawing the attention of the state as well conservative male bloggers who have taken to policing the Internet for bloggers acting in ways that they perceive as inappropriate according to Islam.

Saudi Eve, who regularly writes about her love life and religion, and who declined to be identified by her real name because of the sensitivity of the issue, woke up on June 2 to find that her blog had been blocked.

"Back and blocked," she wrote on her blog on June 2. "I'm temporarily back in Saudi only to find that 'Saudi Eve is officially blocked in Saudi.'"

As school winds down for the summer, a new blog launched by WFP will keep kids active while giving them a chance to talk directly to aid workers battling on the frontline of some of the world's hunger hotspots.

Following the global success of WFP's educational video game "Food Force", designed to teach 8-13 year olds about hunger and humanitarian aid work, WFP has now created "Joe's blog", a web journal named after one of Food Force’s main characters.

Reports have come in from a number of cites around the country that the entire Blogspot domain is blocked in its entirety. Just recently only three days back, specifically on the 3rd of May, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority had lifted the entire ban, allowing all internet users unrestricted surfing to the 10 millions websites hosted on the blogspot.com domain. It appears as if the three day relief was just to appease the United Nations in its annual 3rd of May celebrations for the Freedom of Press.

The PTA (Pakistan Telecommunication Authority) had initially blocked access to the blogspot domain on the 3rd of March 2006, due to a Supreme Court decision dated 2nd March 2006 instructing the PTA to ban 12 offending websites which highlighted the blasphemous cartoons on the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). In adherence to the Supreme Court ruling, all 12 sites were blocked including one that was hosted on the blogspot domain. But rather than block the offending blogspot website, the PTA blocked the entire domain (www.blogspot.com) which happens to be one of the most popular blog hosting domains hosting approximately upwards of ten million blogs globally. We strongly oppose this blanket ban on any website, and ask the world to join hands to peacefully protest the censorship of the internet.

China is the world's second-largest Internet market after the United States with more than 110 million users. A survey by Chinese search engine Baidu.com put the current number of blog, or Web log, sites at 36.82 million which are kept by 16 million people, the official Xinhua news agency said on Saturday.

The number of Chinese bloggers is expected to hit 60 million by the end of this year, Xinhua said, quoting a report on China's media industry by the prestigious Tsinghua University.

Zhang Xiaorong, strategy development director of "Bokee", which was set up in 2002 and claims the biggest share of China's blogging market, said his company adds about 100,000 blogs a day.

"The expected 60 million bloggers would account for more than half of China's 110 million netizens," Xinhua quoted Zhang as saying.

Those of you paying attention to the Technorati 100 will have noticed that it is getting more international, due to the explosion of non-English blogs as Dave noted in State of the Blosphere. With today's update, the number one spot has changed from Boing Boing by Xeni Jardin and friends to ?? ??? ??BLOG by Xu Jing Lei. Evidently a name starting with X is a big help -- perhaps Xiaxue will be next?

We've received a number of reports today that users in China can't get access to the Technorati site. Of course, we're taking these reports very seriously, and we're trying to get more accurate information. We'll let you know when we know more.

It was disorienting for someone used to these services but I find it hard to get worked up about it. Applications such as Wikipedia and Blogspot are growing into such a strong force that they will enter China, inevitably. I predict there will even be Chinese competitors (not just translated versions). And then, we who may now gloat on our access to Technorati, Wikipedia and Blogspot, will find that the last laugh will be on us.

"I was a bit fed up with the way the big media in France and Europe talk about the relationships with America.

"In France, we only talk about the relationship when there's a problem with Iraq, or a problem with commercial issues. And this is not the truth. This is not the real life.

"So I thought that maybe we could see what happens if I talk to the American people. It's not so crazy."

Baghdad Burning, a first-hand account written under the pseudonym Riverbend, is one of 19 books in contention.

Others include Alan Bennett's Untold Stories, a biography of 19th-Century cook and author Mrs Beeton and a study of post-war US-Soviet relations.

The winner of the £30,000 prize will be announced on 14 June.

Professor Robert Winston, chair of the judging panel, said this year's longlist contained "an exceptionally wide variety of genres".

Three years later and the nightmares of bombings and of shock and awe have evolved into another sort of nightmare. The difference between now and then was that three years ago, we were still worrying about material things- possessions, houses, cars, electricity, water, fuel... It's difficult to define what worries us most now. Even the most cynical war critics couldn't imagine the country being this bad three years after the war... Allah yistur min il rab3a (God protect us from the fourth year).

"Four years ago we did a very small blog about the World Cup and attracted attention from all over the world. This time we wanted to take things to the next level and to cover every aspect of this global event from a perspective that you rarely find in mainstream media: the fan perspective. The response thus far has been amazing and we expect things to explode as the start of the tournament nears in June," said Sean Keener, President and Co-Founder of BootsnAll.

Comment is free is a major expansion of Guardian comment and analysis on the web. It is a collective group blog, bringing together regular columnists from the Guardian and Observer newspapers with other writers and commentators representing a wide range of experience and interests. The aim is to host an open-ended space for debate, dispute, argument and agreement and to invite users to comment on everything they read.

The blog is updated regularly through the day, with best blogs featuring on our pick of the day. We also carry all the comment from the Guardian and Observer newspapers, giving readers the chance to comment on these articles directly for the first time.

Comment is free is the home of If, the cartoon strip by Steve Bell - Britain's most celebrated political cartoonist - making its debut on Guardian Unlimited after 25 years in the paper. Dan Chung, our award-winning photographer, also has his own photo-blog. And we regularly podcast Guardian and Observer political and cultural debates.

Politics, culture and literature have topped the list of favorite topics among the rapidly growing blogging community in the Arab world. These were the findings of a month-long study conducted by Maktoob.com, the world's largest and most popular online Arab community.

The study, covering over 4,500 blogs created by users on Maktoob.com, showed a clear stand towards politics, with 40 percent bloggers voicing their concerns on recent issues such as the Denmark cartoon controversy and the Iran nuclear stand-off. Cultural topics, at 25 percent, came in second, with literature, entertainment and internet issues following closely.

***

A prime example is Yasser Abu Hilalah, the Jordan-based President of Al Jazeera TV, whose political journal on Maktoob.com has evoked a strong response from the Internet browsing community. Posting an average 3-4 blogs per week, Abu Hilalah's site features his observations about politics and life in the Arab world.

Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Chris DeWolfe, speaking at an Internet conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, said its big plan for the year is to expand in Europe, Australia and elsewhere.

***

"We need to prove ourselves internationally," DeWolfe said before investors at the Thomas Weisel Partners Internet & Telecom Conference. MySpace, based in Santa Monica, has already taken off in the United Kingdom, he continued, and it is "taking a hard look at China."

DeWolfe did not offer details about doing business in China, a fast-growing Internet market that is a critical, but controversial, focus for Web companies such as Yahoo and Google.

MySpace, which Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. bought last year for $580 million, has exploded onto the online scene since its premiere in 2003. In January, it had the second-most number of page views, according to comScore Media Metrix, with U.S. Internet users looking at 23 billion MySpace pages. Yahoo came in first at 33 billion and Microsoft's MSN third at nearly 16 billion.

Milk Pig, another blog reported to have been disappereared, is also back in action. Both Massage Milk and Milk Pig are hosted on Yculblog.com. However the third blog mentioned in yesterday's Danwei report, Pro State in Flames is still not functioning.

Hmm.

Bloggers in Pakistan became first became aware of the ban on 28 February when they were unable to access a popular blog hosting site, Blogspot.

One of the blocked sites is hosted on Blogspot, which led to the blocking of all web journals hosted on the site.

The Pakistan bloggers found their blogs blocked, even though their blogs are not connected with the cartoons.

They say they have still been able to edit and update their blogs, but not able to read them.

With the recent arrival of Web 2.0 and citizen participation, OhmyNews International aims to provide citizens of the world with a global platform of participation and intends to offer a support structure for international citizen reporters.

Following the path of OhmyNews Korea, OhmyNews International will take the spirit of citizen participation as the cornerstone of its media business. At the same time, it will try to adapt its business concept and newsroom structure to accommodate the different needs and environments of each country it enters.

As its first international news venture, OhmyNews International will establish 'OhmyNews Japan' before August 2006 in Japan. 'OhmyNews Japan' will provide Japanese citizens with a multimedia platform of citizen participation, hence introducing a completely different kind of news media to Japan's media market that will live up to the spirit of Web 2.0.

Unlike western bloggers who often focus on news and politics, the Chinese white collar bloggers see complaining alongside office and personal gossip as their priorities, according to the survey.

According to the findings of a blogging survey conducted by CBP among white-collar workers in China's four largest cities - Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen - 52% responded they already had a blog, while another 28% said they plan to begin a blog in the near future.

"Weblogs have become the fourth online channel for Chinese people to communicate with each other, following email, bulletin board systems (BBS) and instant messaging tools such as QQ and MSN Messenger," Bian Bingbin, President and Chief Career Consultant with CBP Career Consultants, told Interfax Monday. "Blogging is now a lifestyle habit for more and more Chinese white-collar workers, with a majority updating their blogs once every three days on average," he said.

The Redmond software company, which operates a popular blogging technology called MSN Spaces, said Tuesday that the changes will include efforts to make the banned content available to users elsewhere in the world even if Microsoft decides it has a legal duty to block it in a particular country.

The company also pledged to provide users with a clear notice that it has shut down a Web site because it received a legally binding notice that the material violates local laws. Previously, it has simply said the content was unavailable.

Microsoft has said that it 'will remove access to blog content only when it receives a legally binding notice from the government indicating that the material violates local laws, or if the content violates MSN's terms of use'.

The Chinese agencies will have to first find offending content, and then send Microsoft a separate letter for each instance it finds, putting the onus, and the overhead for content blocking, on Chinese officials.

If the Chinese agencies decide that, in doing this, Microsoft is failing to adequately block the content it doesn't want available it could shut Microsoft's MSN Spaces blog service down.

Reflecting its uneasy alliance with the Chinese government, Google isn't releasing all its services.

Neither Google's e-mail nor blogging services will be offered in China because the company doesn't want to risk being ordered by the government to turn over anyone's personal information. The e-mail service, called Gmail, creates a huge database of users' messages and makes them instantly searchable. The blogging services contain a wide range of personal background.

Although MSN Spaces is not controlled by Microsoft's Chinese operation, Microsoft has said the blocking of the blog is in line with its policy of complying with "global and local laws, norms and industry practices".

China is the second-largest internet market after the US and Microsoft is one of the leading western IT companies operating in China.

Last autumn Yahoo gave information about journalist Shi Tao's personal e-mail account to Beijing. The regime later jailed him for 10 years on charges of divulging state secrets.

For the past couple of years, Li has kept a blog--written under the pen name Muzi Mei--that has chronicled everything from her penchant for orgies and Internet dating to her skepticism toward marriage when it means staying faithful to one man. This fall the Beijing resident posted a recording of her own lovemaking sounds that would make Paris Hilton blush. More than 50,000 people simultaneously tried to download the 25-minute podcast, crashing the host server. Despite government attempts to censor it, the sex diary is so popular that Li's pen name is intermittently the most searched keyword on China's top search engine. "I express my freedom through sex," says Li, unapologetically. "It's my life, and I can do what I want."

Muzi Mei, real name Li Li, rose to a brief far-reaching notoriety in the last few months of 2003. Writing from south China's Guangzhou city, she kept a blog where she described sexual encounters with various men, including a well-known rock musician.

Bokee (formerly BlogChina) founder Fang Xingdong said yesterday that registered Bokee users same magnitude next year.had increased about fivefold this year, to about five million, and he expected an increase of the

Bokee has a 10 per cent market share in terms of user numbers and Mr. Fang expects it to break even by the end of next month.

There are an estimated 100,000 active blogs written by Iranians both within the country and across the diaspora. Persian ties with French as the second most common blogging language after English.

Over the last year, however, Iranian authorities have arrested and beaten dozens of bloggers, charged with crimes such as espionage and insulting leaders of the Islamic Republic. Among them is Omid Sheikhan, who last month was sentenced to one year in prison and 124 lashes of the whip for writing a blog that featured satirical cartoons of Iranian politicians.

The press freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders last week named Iran as one of 15 countries who were "enemies of the internet".

SmartyHost said the competition was accepting entries from any Australian regardless of the where their blog was hosted, and out of 25,000 visitors to the entry page, 500 had so far put their blog forward for the top prize.

Anoosh Manzoori, managing director, said this was the first time a competition of this size had set its sights on blogging.

"The judging will assess the actual content of the blog and how frequently they update their content," he said.

The judging panel will comprise a number of journalists, academics and executives from outside the company, who will jointly decide on the winning blog.

Mark Gatty Saunt, Gulf Director at Al Bawaba comments, "Blogging is becoming a hugely popular global trend for internet users and writers alike. And to keep up with ever changing trends, Al Bawaba is launching its own blogging service, so that anyone, with little or no technical background, can maintain a personal blog for potentially millions to see."
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"We identified language as the biggest barrier to blogging in the Arab world. And by offering the service in Arabic language, as well as English, we have broken that barrier and expect to spark off a huge blogging trend amongst Arabic language speakers from all over the world."

Mr Yi, who is a teacher at Chengdu university, has recently posted on controversial subjects such as a campaign by peasants in Guangdong province to remove a village chief they believed to be corrupt. His blog was closed down on the orders of China's Internet surveillance bureau.

Press freedom organisation Reporters without Borders has condemned the closure in a press release. "We call for the immediate reopening of this blog and we point out that the Chinese constitution is supposed to guarantee free expression," it said.

"In a country where self-censorship reigns, we should salute the courage of the few bloggers like Wang who dare to publicly protest against government bans."

Wangyi, an anti-government Chinese intellectual, currently uses the blog as his microphone to broadcast the dissidence and fight for the independence of justice. The blog is currently not accessible. It's possible to get around this problem by reading search engines' cached versions. Search for Wang Yi's Microphone in Chinese.

This is very, very beta, but it could be big... I think: http://chinese.engadget.com

Late last year I spend some time in China and had a major Starbucks moment. People were lining up to pay US$4 for a cup of coffee even though a lot of white collar folks in China make $500-$1,000 a month. There is an appetite for US products in China, it's a huge market, but there are ton of issues.

Eleven million South Koreans now have a Cyworld "mini-hompy," or mini home page. That is nearly a quarter of the overall population and a third of the country's online population. SK Communications says that about 79 percent of Cyworld users are in their 20s or 30s. In November, the Cyworld Web site attracted 16.8 million unique visits, according to KoreanClick, a research concern, which also estimated that 90 percent of South Koreans in their 20s were members of Cyworld. Cyworld mini home pages are standardized with templates, the biggest of which looks like an opened agenda. The basics of the Cyworld mini home page service are provided for free. But personalizing and decorating pages with digital items like music, background posters and animated characters costs money in the form of "acorns," which cost 100 won, or about 10 cents, each.